


SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

by shibarifan01



Category: Escape Plan (2013), Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-03 03:03:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1064987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shibarifan01/pseuds/shibarifan01
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harold has quite the turn when a new number strikes much too close to home</p>
            </blockquote>





	SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

**Author's Note:**

> This thing had been bouncing around in my head for a while (since I went to see the movie, really) and I decided to start working on it. Only one chapter so far... and I'm not really sure how many chapters there will be and where I am going with this. But as you know me, there will probably be angsty bits, naughty bits and all sorts of things in between.
> 
> I've just reposted it - realized I'd written "Carl" Hobbes instead of "Willard" Hobbes... don't fairly know what I was thinking... it's all fixed now.

 

John was still confined to bed, although Harold had had him moved to his own loft at 810 Baxter Street so he would be more comfortable. His body was slowly mending but his state of mind concerned Harold. When John had awakened after his near-death experience, he’d opened his eyes, turned his head and smiled at Harold. But in a matter of seconds, the events of the past few days had returned to him and the light in his eyes had dimmed and he’d turned his head away from Finch, his arm folding over his face. The moan that had been torn from his throat had almost brought Harold to his knees. Harold was heartbroken – he’d done a lot of soul-searching over the past weeks and he had so hoped that he would be able to reconnect with John as they had been before Carter’s death. And he felt awful just thinking about it, felt that in hoping to rekindle his relationship with Reese, because it was too soon after her death, he was being unfaithful to her memory. But he missed John so much, missed their quiet evenings, their easy banter, the dinners John cooked so superbly, and their love-making, of course, John’s loving hands, his tenderness, his hard body… And if all those deaths were weighing him down, he could imagine what they were doing to John; John who hadn’t said a word and whose cheeks were often suspiciously wet. But Harold was unable to bring him out of his shell and so he was left there, by the bed, again desultorily folding the comforter that covered John, undecided about what to do, incapable of helping him in any way.

 

The next few days were choreographed like a crazy ballet: Harold hovering around John, John trying to swing out of bed as soon as Harold turned his back. And then Shaw would come in for a turn to make sure John wouldn’t leave when Harold had to go look after his and John’s covers. Fusco would play second violin and keep John company when Shaw was dispatched to look after numbers. Harold had even inveigled Root, Leon and Zoe to make sure John would stay put. Even Bear was set to work in this "pas-de-six", settling on John’s legs, obeying Harold’s words and playing a deaf ear to John’s commands for once, though it was plain to see that the poor dog was in a big quandary about it.

 

Once Harold had put his team in place, he felt it was safe to go back to the library and resume looking after the numbers. He felt bad that for the past two weeks, nobody had looked in on the Machine, apart from Root, but her relationship with it (or her, as she persisted on calling it) was now vastly different from Harold’s. He dreaded the thought of all those numbers coming up with nobody to look after them.

 

That morning, Harold made his way alone to the library, bought his own green tea, decided to skip the donuts and as he was turning the corner to make his way into the building, he heard a public phone ringing nearby. With his heart way up in his throat, he answered, remembering too clearly the night when he’d left another phone ringing without answering it.

 

He took note of the information and went into the building, his footsteps ringing hollowly on the stone floor. A fine sheen of dust glinted feebly on his desk in the early morning sun, and that, more than anything else, brought to his mind the phrase he’d told John at the beginning of their adventure, that they would probably both die doing this job. And so, one day, that dust would start accumulating on his worktable, and would never stop doing so because nobody would be there to continue their work.

 

Shaking his head to clear those gloomy thoughts, he set his tea, his briefcase and his newspaper on his worktable and went to gather the books he needed to identify the day’s number. He then sat at his desk, powered on the computers and waited to see what numbers would show up aside from that morning’s… and waited… and waited... in vain. Apparently, the Machine had decided not to provide numbers while they were dealing with the aftermath  of Carter’s death, and this fact, more than anything else, sent chills down Harold’s spine. The Machine was becoming more and more sentient, able to make its own decisions as to whom to save (or not) and when. Root’s words came back to him, about them having much bigger problems to tackle, and he knew it did not bode well for the future.

 

But that day’s number still had to be looked after, so he entered the numbers he’d gotten from the Dewey decimal system and while the Machine was doing its ID work, he went to put the books back on their shelves.

 

He came back, had a sip of tea and turned around to face the screen… and almost fell off his chair. John’s face was looking at him and he could hardly breathe. With his heart beating a mile a minute and his fingers trembling, he scrolled down to the information provided by Social Security and the Machine: Willard Hobbes, 45 years old, 6 ft. 4, 200 lbs, grey hair, blue-green eyes, single, prison warden, living in Pasadena, California but registered at a New York hotel for a few weeks’ time while he awaited a transfer to his new job as administrator-in-chief of a newly-constructed prison facility, location unknown.

 

Harold took a deep breath, looked again at the photo, printed it and left posthaste…

 

To be continued…


End file.
